The Past, Present and Future of Astronomical Data Formats

Understand

The future of astronomy is inextricably entwined with the care and feeding of astronomical data products.

• Community standards such as FITS and NDF have been instrumental in the success of numerous astronomy projects.
• Their very success challenges us to entertain pragmatic strategies to adapt and evolve the standards to meet the aggressive data-handling requirements of facilities now being designed and built.
• We discuss characteristics that have made standards successful in the past, as well as desirable features for the future, and an open discussion follows.